multi cam shoot

Dan Sherman wrote on 7/12/2005, 5:37 PM
Asked to shoot three day music festival.
But here's the catch.
Producers want to turn hi-lite DVDs for sale before the end of each day.
Anybody done this? Interested to know the logistics and whether anyone you know who has tried this is confined in,----you know,---one of those ,---ah,--- big hotels with the er,---barred windows,---and with the soft music playing.
Not that I've ever been, mind you,---excpet to visit.

Comments

DJPadre wrote on 7/12/2005, 5:47 PM
go grab video toaster ;)

no seriously, as the day goes along, youll realise teh need for a firestore type unit. At least on teh main camera
At least one of those wiill save you much time..

anyways as the tapes come in, start the edit..you mihgt need someone to be a runner..
with vegas its a brilliant multicam tool and eds excalibur will also save some time.

with a 3 day event, you'll be making a fair bit of cash so dont be afraid to go out and hire a firestore or a couple of extra hands to help
PeterWright wrote on 7/12/2005, 6:12 PM
The biggest time drawback will be MPEG rendering and DVD burning - you'll have to work out a deadline at which you'll have to stop editing in order to have DVDs ready for sale.

A DVD burner tower to burn say 9 at once would also help.

Have the DVDs printed and ready to go beforehand.
RalphM wrote on 7/12/2005, 6:24 PM
At the risk of sounding less than sophisticated - if there is not a real need for an authored DVD, you can feed a set-top burner from the timeline, then use that as your master in a stand-alone duplicator.

As there is probably a desire to be able to jump to specific performances, you can get a substitute for specific chapter points, by rendering each performance as a separate avi file, then manually stopping the recorder after each file is recorded to create a new title on the disc.

Crude approach, but it saves MPEG render time.
GlennChan wrote on 7/12/2005, 6:41 PM
I've done this for music CDs back while I was in high school. It was possible because we had a whole computer lab full of CD burners. It's slightly easier to have multiple burners hooked up to one computer, and burn off that. I haven't tried duplication towers.


DVDs will be a lot more challenging technically. As well, do the economics of it even make sense? It'll cost you a lot to pull this off.
p@mast3rs wrote on 7/12/2005, 6:42 PM
Just how much time will you have to edit and burn each day? Seriously, how much time will there be between the last act and the time they expect to have DVDs for sale? Personally, I just dont see how it would be possible even if you had a real time hardware encoder. Maybe if you could sell them at the following days shows I could see it working out but no way do I see it happening same day in order to turn even the most remote profit.

I would have passed on this gig but its not my gig. Heres wishing you luck to finding a good solution and hope to hear of the success after your event.
B.Verlik wrote on 7/12/2005, 7:31 PM
The producers are expecting miracles. Multi-cam shoot highlights the same day? Impossible without a crew working on tapes as soon as their done. Get a live mixer and mix down all cameras at once, as your shooting, then have that footage, as each tape is finished, fed into an mpeg converter (good "on the fly" types are very expensive). And you can forget about actually doing any same day editing(maybe just write down certain time periods that they should convert as most interesting.). Maybe some pre-made mpeg titles you can stitch onto the finished mixed down mpgs.
This will probably be your last music festival and you may need hair dye afterwards.
Dan Sherman wrote on 7/15/2005, 6:14 PM
Thanks for the input.
Have discussed this with associate and we have decided to aim lower if we take on the job at all.
Shoot, edit and author a hilights DVD featuring sets from best performances of days 1 and 2 and offer it for sale on day 3.
We would rent a Panasonic WJMX 50 video mixer, and use three cameras, intercom, and director. Record live-switched show direct to hard drive. Tap into the board feed for good audio.
Openings are done ahead of time including credits etcs.
Have also tossed around the idea of interviewing festival goers and merchants,---this is street festival,---to intersperse between performances.
This allows for a little more breathing space and a better end product will be the result.
We split 50/50 with producers.
If we make money, we win,---if we break even we went to event video school for free,----if we lose we paid tuition.